Whiskey Lullaby
by The Potless Stoner
Summary: "She put him out like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette. She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin' to forget." Azula does find peace after finding their mother, though it is far from the sort of peace the gaang had hoped for.


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Have been working on this since Part 3 came out (my sad, sad self get's a bit obsessive…) it caused this song to be the most played on my itunes (154 plays the next highest is only at 7) so… yeh…

I don't think it needs warnings but if you've heard the song (go look that shit up on YouTube) you know that it involves depression, alcoholism and suicide, if you have dealt with any of these things (my deepest condolences) read at your discursion, though my personal opinion is that it's not good enough/ detailed enough to cause any bad reactions.

Song: _Whisky Lullaby _by Brad Paisley feat. Alison Krauss

On with the show!

Disclaimer: …

_**She put him out like  
the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette.**_

Why hadn't she just finished what she'd come for? She'd had the woman in her grasp. She could have finished this, put an end to the shouting and the whispering and the noise. But she hadn't. She'd been weak.

"_If what you say is true… If I really am your mother…Then I'm sorry I didn't love you enough."_

Those words... They'd stopped her, frozen her. That this woman, who was and was not her mother had the audacity to apologize. As if she was to be pitied! She didn't need pity. She didn't need love. She needed the voices to get the hell out of her head!

And yet she couldn't do it. _"Even when you're strong, you're weak."_ It must be a family trait. Even given the chance she balked. A few simple words had put out the fire she'd had to kill the woman before her and her new overwhelming thought had been the need to get away. Get away from her_, _from him, from them. Each step she felt the dead embers of anger burning beneath her feet and her own tears fell to the coals, pain simmering with anger to spur her on faster, and faster, until the world became a blur as if ash had been smeared across a wet canvas of greens and blues.

**_She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin' to forget_**

The valley's name was a misnomer. It didn't matter how long she moved through the forest (had it been a year? A month?) the pain hung in her chest as closely entwined with her as her inner fire. Each breath hurt. Each flame burned her insides as much as it burned the trees around her. No matter how many times the world around her melted into a blue furnace or how loud the crackle of lighting she could still see _her_ face and hear _her_ voice echoing through her head. It was disorienting. Kept awake by the voices she never stopped moving, never stopped running. Until she stumbled out of the forest and into a town, too small to have a name, but too large to notice one more face.

_**We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time**_

The liquid burned as it ran down her throat and left a warm buzz in her chest, as if she was breathing fire. The pity in the bar keep's eyes brought anger to her gut, but it suited her fine when the flow of strong liquor continued without payment or question. No one looked at her here. No one spoke to her. Most of all no one recognized her.

She was left alone with her thoughts and her drink and slowly the numbness of alcohol worked into her blood and bones and left her in a state of utter physical unfeeling… If only it would reach her heart and numb the pain clinging to her chest like an open wound that would never heal.

_**But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind**_

It was like trying to treat a severed limb with morphine alone. The pain may have been dulled, but the wound remained. Every day. Every hour. Every minute. She could hear the soft, kind voice, fabricated by her own mind- because she was sure she'd never heard the woman sound so soft to her in her life- even after her body had gone pleasantly numb.

The only logical thing to do of course was to drink more, until the visions of blood spilling from the hole in her chest faded to black. But the only result was that hazy warmth becoming arms wrapped around her and that soft voice finding her once more in her dreams, forcing her to wake and try again.

_**Until the night**_

"_Dear, I think you need to stop now."_ Her mother's words were tinged with concern. She grit her teeth, normally by now her vision was beginning to fail her and her ears were ringing, drowning out the woman's voice enough for her to sleep. Tonight, however, it didn't matter how many times the glass touched her lips. The voice remained.

She heard the bar keep taking her cup to be refilled and looked up to see the man's blurry outline. With an uncoordinated hand she reached out, grabbed the bottle and drank from it instead.

"_Azula! You're going to make yourself sick, stop it. Azula, are you listening to me?"_

_**He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger  
And finally drank away her memory**_

The world was muted, in color and sound. Everything seemed to slow and quiet the way it did during an Earth Kingdom winter storm. Blessed silence, finally. But with silence came the weight of her solitude. She was alone and she'd never felt it as badly as she did now in this slowed and faded world. She'd never been truly alone, not with the ever present voices, but now they were gone and her world had shrunk down to being only her and the bottle she held in a death grip. Fear rolled her stomach, she hadn't wanted to be alone, she'd only wanted the voices to go away. For a moment of silence, not for this crushing loneliness.

She didn't realize she'd raised the bottle to her lips again until she felt the burn of alcohol running down her throat. Her heart beat heavy and slow one second, and pounded like a war drum the next. Her breathing came shallow, inhaling felt like fire in her lungs, and exhaling only fanned the flames. Her vision swam unsteadily and her head felt like it was splitting.

She was sick and tired and alone and the heat of the pub was cloying. She needed to get out and away. The repressed loneliness and self hate dredged up by the silencing of none existent voices turned to a painful longing for them to return and fueled her stumbling feet faster to the door but her movements were slow and shaky, each step felt like a small earthquake. The ring of broken glass when her unsteady actions knocked her empty cup to the ground brought a suffocating anxiety so familiar she felt tears prick her eyes but couldn't place the memory. A new panic rose in her and fed the need to escape.

Her breathing stuttered when she fell out into the pouring rain that had become a dull buzz to her impaired ears and she had to remind herself to breath as her lungs froze in remembrance of memories that would not fully surface to her clouded brain.

_**Life is short but this time it was bigger  
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees**_

Her feet only lasted to the edge of a dark alley before her legs refused to carry her any farther. The ground was cold and unforgiving beneath her, the rain on her back equally so, but soon as her strength had failed her so too did her senses. Feelings fading to numbness, hearing dying to a low ring, sight blurring and fading. Almost peaceful, almost like going to sleep. _No, _she thought. It wasn't supposed to be peaceful. She was a warrior. An enemy's sword was what she was supposed to fall to, not this, this numb, passive sleep. She was better than this, had been meant for more than this…

As the world went black even her violent angry thoughts faded into a dull buzz like a fading lullaby while numb nothingness surrounded her as if in a long forgotten embrace.

_**We found him with his face down in the pillow **_

Ursa couldn't help the smile that crossed her lips as she watched her son who, despite his age, was more than willing to run around the gardens with his youngest sister. She sat beside the turtle-duck pond in the shade of the old cherry blossom tree that took up the center of this side of the garden. This had been one of her few joys in the palace, the peace and quiet of the gardens. She closed her eyes and listened to her children laugh and remembered years past when the girl her son played with was closer to his age, with her father's dark hair and gold eyes. A sharp pang of guilt came to her stomach as the thought of her oldest daughter surfaced. It gave her some comfort to think Zuko had sent his best men to look for her, but the thought of the pain and anger in those gold eyes still made her stomach turn in guilt.

"Milady…" a servant cleared his throat beside her. She looked to him and he bowed, presenting a large silver plate holding only a scroll sealed with the search captain's seal and tied with black ribbon.

The familiar scene made her breath catch in her throat as she was taken back to a moment so similar it turned her stomach. Listening to her eldest children play until a servant presented her with a letter from the front. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat remembering the letter detailing her nephew's death and with a shaky hand she took the scroll and the servant left.

Her fingers trembled undoing the ties of the ribbon and breaking the seal.

_To the Fire Lord and his family,_

_On this the tenth day of the second month of spring, I regret to inform you Princess Azula was found dead of heart failure…_

As if in sympathy to the words her own heart stopped. The world around her seemed to still and all noise turned to a quiet ring. Her vision began to tunnel focusing on those eight words.

_Princess Azula was found dead of heart failure…_

The letter continued but Ursa couldn't make out the rest from the shaking of her hands and the blurring of her sight. When had she started crying? Her head spun with the thought, her daughter, barely sixteen years old, not even an adult yet, dead. _Dead of heart failure_. She remembered the strong, unruly child she'd left behind so long ago. What could cause such a strong willed heart to fail?

The brush of parchment against grass, not even loud enough to be called a proper noise, dragged her from her silent stupor. The paper had fallen from her hand- a second page, attached to the first. The second paper seemed much older, worn from being folded and unfolded, ink smudged here and there at the edges from restless fingers constantly handling it.

_**With a note that said I'll love her till I die**_

Her eyes searched the captain's letter for explanation, trying to read passed the words that still echoed through her head.

… _in the town of Diyi. We will be returning with her within the week. The attached note was found in the princess's possession. _

She looked at the folded paper once more, its creases worn almost to tearing, its ink stained edges. What could be written that was so important Azula kept it on her for so long, even through her insanity? Carefully she unfolded the page, the words smeared but legible.

_DRAGON EMPORER: Wretched water spirit! Now that I've escaped your curse and regained my true nature, you shall pay for your trickery…_

She knew the lines by heart and recognized the page from the sole copy of _Love Amongst the Dragons_ that she'd brought with her to the palace. In her rush to leave she'd left it behind. She could hardly believe Azula found it much less kept it. New tears formed as she remembered each time she'd watch Azula and Zuko reenact the scene after watching the Ember Island Players. Even then Azula's memory and perfectionist streak drove her to memorize the lines and Ursa would laugh as her children would argue when Zuko would forget his.

"_Alright, young lady," Ursa said, pulling her daughter away from wrestling with her brother over what his line really was and picking her up. "If you know the script so well, how does it end?"_

_Without thinking Azula replied easily, making her voice as low as she could to mimic the actor who'd played the Dragon Emperor, "Though I was trapped in the body of a mortal, you willingly gave me your heart. I cannot help but give you mine in return."_

_Ursa smiled, chuckling when her son wrinkled his nose at the unbearably sappy line before dramatically replying, "Only with your glory hidden in false form could you finally recognize my devotion." It was only when she ducked to kiss her daughter's cheek that Azula seemed to realize she was well away from the ground and that her mother had a tight hold of her. Small hand pushed on her shoulders trying to push away from her, half giggled protests escaped the young girl as her mother peppered her cheeks and forehead in kisses._

_That night she kissed her daughter's forehead as she put her to bed, "Goodnight, my little Dragon Emperor."_

"_Goodnight, mom, 'love you." Azula's reply was almost swallowed in a yawn._

"_I love you too, sweet heart, always will." _

That had been their last trip to Ember Island, or at least, Azula's last trip. After that summer she'd been sent away to academy and the trips slowly waned into pleasant, oft-forgotten memories. Her thumb brushed over the faded letters, smearing the ink farther as her own tears joined those Azula must have shed each time she'd unfolded the page. Her eyes traced the faded script, the smudged ink, singed edges. How long had Azula carried this? How often had she recited the words to herself (no doubt remembering the same things Ursa had when she'd reread the script)?

So lost in her own grief she barely noticed her son and second daughter approaching her wondering what was wrong. When she did finally come out of her anguish enough to notice them the lump in her throat refused to let words escape so her only answer for them was to hold out the letter and let them read for themselves, as her own fingers held tight to the script page as if the smeared lines were all that was left of her second born.

_**And when we buried him beneath the willow  
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby**_

The rest of the week passed in a mix of long inconsolable hours remembering her missing daughter and short blurs of activity as preparations were made for Azula's funeral. Just thinking the word brought a lump to her throat. There was no pain worse for a parent than laying their own child to rest. When the squad finally returned carrying a casket between two of their rhinos the dizzying, sickening pain she'd felt just reading that letter came back tenfold. All week she'd been desperately trying to convince herself it was nothing but a bad dream, trying to ignore the preparations being made around her. Seeing the dark wood casket screamed the finality of it. Her daughter was gone. Not in the way she had been, simply disappeared but still alive. Truly gone and not returning. The thought made her knees weak and her stomach turn. When the procession passed her the only thing keeping her standing was Ikem's arm around her shoulder while both her remaining children tried to comfort her.

Her eyes never strayed from the dark wood coffin that held her second born set atop a carefully laid burn pyre. The fire sage's words fell on deaf ears as they recited Azula's eulogy.

"Crown Princess Azula, you were our nation's prodigy."

"_Mama!" Ursa groggily sat up in bed. Hearing her daughter cry out for her at night was nothing new- nightmares were common place for the three year old- so her body was slow at rising to answer the crying girl until she smelled smoke and heard the crackle of flames. In an instant she was awake and alert in her daughter's room only to be confronted by a sight that stopped her heart. Her young daughter stood crying in the middle of her crib while the rest of her bed burned. The flames stayed away from the sobbing child but the crib she'd slept in was not so lucky nor was the floor around it._

"Fire bending master before turning fourteen-"

_Just a child! Not old enough to be sent to war! Not old enough to be a conqueror! Not old enough not to be frightened of monsters in the dark! _The image ran through her mind over and over. Her daughter's golden eyes full of pain and fear, twisted by insanity brought on by things no mind so young should have to face. Her words confused and angry but faltering to anyone who listened closely. If only she'd listened closer, earlier when Azula was trying to impress her with sparks, rather than infernos. When her daughter was running from monsters under her bed, not counting herself among them.

"You were daughter to Ozai and Ursa-"

_Were?_ The word hurt beyond the simple implication that Azula was gone. Had she ever been hers?

"Sister of Fire Lord Zuko and Kiyi-"

The wishful thought of all three of her children together playing in the gardens ran through her mind's eye. Her stomach turned when she remembered eating dinner with her son and daughter and not recognizing them. The peace was tense on Azula's part but it was there. The last time her children had all been together and there'd been even a semblance of peace in the room.

"We lay you to rest."

She had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming, instead only letting an anguished cry slip when they lit the funeral pyre. She wanted to scream. Insist they stop and make sure, but she held her peace tears flowing long forgotten down her cheeks as she watched the fire. Flames licked up from the burning pyre to surround the lacquered dark wood of Azula's casket. If she looked hard enough she could almost see the flames turn blue around it. The crackle of the pyre sounded almost like a chorus unto itself, singing a creaky lullaby to the fallen.

When the fires had finally died and the funeral ended her daughter's ashes were placed in an ornate cobalt urn and buried beneath the garden's cherry blossom tree, a small kindness from her son for the both of them- placing Azula closer to the sun than her ancestors who were all laid to rest deep in the palace vaults and letting her have some small comfort that her daughter was still close.

_**The rumors flew but nobody knew how much she blamed herself**_

For the weeks and months that followed Azula's funeral the palace was filled with speculative gossip. The search captain had investigated her presence in the small town and had informed her and her son that Azula had frequented a pub there. Almost all the citizens had admitted to seeing her but never speaking to her. She'd blended into the scenery, bottle in hand. A homeless drunk as far as most of the town was concerned. It wasn't long until all of the servants had gotten hold of this information and had begun speculating on the princess's self medication.

Ursa knew, without the rumors, the cause of her daughter's end. She'd been told about the phantoms that plagued the girl in her own guise, knew the things they told her daughter and it hurt to know it was her own actions that had driven her daughter over the edge. She'd unabashedly favored her first born. He'd been so much like a young Ikem there was hardly thought involved when it came to loving her son. Azula had been the opposite, emulating her father in both looks and actions. She couldn't look into her daughter's eyes without seeing Ozai. And perhaps, she thought ashamed, she'd been just as childish as her husband-lashing out at his favorite child as if to cause him pain in the way he'd done to Zuko.

Zuko knew her regrets, shared them even, but always tried to comfort her. Tried to convince her it wasn't her fault- that Azula would have ended up as she did with or without her- but she could never believe him. What mother didn't blame themselves for their child's death? What mother wasn't at fault in some way? If only she'd loved her daughter more. If only she'd chased away the little girl's nightmares instead of contributing to them, becoming them.

She closed her eyes and held them shut for a long time trying to hold back more tears, as she sipped from a glass of wine before bed.

_**For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath**_

A glass of wine before bed to stave off the regret that consumed her nights soon became two as she took to having another with dinner when the noise of so many voices made the absence of one painfully obvious, then a third was added in the late afternoon when the palace was too peaceful and too quiet to keep guilt from her conscience. Each day, slowly, she found herself finishing a bottle when the cries of a long grown infant echoed into her ears, then two when her late daughter crying from nightmares haunted her own, then three when she found herself rereading the smudged and worn page trying to remember her daughter as the proud little girl on the beach and not the broken young woman who'd threatened her life. Each glass was carefully spaced throughout the day so that by the time one wore off another was in hand but kept far enough apart so as to never draw suspicion from her remaining children (the guilt and shame it caused her to think of their responses was for her to keep up the façade). Months went by in a barely recognizable haze of faux warmth, bitter grape and fake smiles. Of course this only made it worse. The vice she now shared with her late daughter that caused her to smile and laugh along with her remaining children in an effort to keep them from being suspicious caused more guilt and shame at having to force happiness towards them. It wasn't that she wasn't happy to have Zuko and Kiyi, but there was still a hole in her patchwork of a family that became even more blatant whenever she heard her little girl laugh and looked up to see brown hair and light eyes instead of black silk locks and dragon gold irises.

_**She finally drank her pain away a little at a time **_

Each day it seemed the wine did its job. Slowly the false, all encompassing warmth clung to her chest at all hours of the day; a numb haze that kept her mind slow enough to stop recognizing the pain it caused her to think of her second born. Little by little the pain transformed into a sort of throbbing pressure, like a cut that had gone numb but kept pulsing…kept bleeding. The sort of numb that came after a wound had bled too much to heal.

_**But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind**_

And continue to bleed she did. The pain of her memories dulled by wine didn't stop the memories from coming. Even when she made a pointed effort to occupy her time by feeding the turtleducks with her youngest daughter, watching Zuko practice his bending or going to the capital city theater with her husband, her thoughts were occupied by her estranged child. Whenever her thoughts drifted to the girl another servant would be called to refill the glass which was never far from her hand these days.

_**Until the night**_

Kiyi had been put to bed hours ago, Zuko had stayed with her until the sun had set, and Ikem had gone to bed shortly after. She was the only one left awake, sitting out on the balcony of her room overlooking the palace gardens. Her hands traced and retraced the torn cover of _Love Amongst the Dragons_. She'd found it hidden beneath her bed, where Azula hid as a child when storms or nightmares kept her awake at night. Its tattered pages tormented her all day but she never had the courage to open it, as if doing so would somehow desecrate something her daughter had valued so highly (even if it was hers in the first place). Just removing it from its place beneath her bed had felt like sacrilege.

With a shaking hand she sipped from her ever present wine glass, mustering the courage to open the script she already knew by heart and read the first fading words.

_ENTER THE DRAGON EMPORER. _

_**She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger**_

"Just leave the bottle." She instructed the servant who had been called to refill her glass, without looking up from the tattered pages. The long forgotten script was worn more heavily than she remembered, here and there were marks that could only be traced to one person (singes during the first bout and loss to the Water Spirit, tear spots when the Dragon Empress first entered). She almost felt her daughter reading over her shoulder as her eyes followed the lines.

Each word brought back memories she was too tired to push away. Thoughts that had otherwise been banished back by the artificial warmth of alcohol rose and ate away at her chest leaving her cold. Each sip warmed her less and less as the pages of the old script began to blur with tears. Unsteady hands set the worn text on the table beside her as she leaned back in her chair. Unfocused eyes looked out at the garden below her balcony and found the nondescript stone beneath the tree with unsettling ease. Quickly she refilled her glass and downed it hoping the wine would help her swallow the lump in her throat.

_**And finally drank away his memory**_

By the time the bottle was empty her eyelids drooped with exhaustion (though whether from tears or fatigue she couldn't tell). When she rose to her feet her legs shook unhappily with her weight, and she had to reach out to the side table to stabilize herself. The rustle of paper caught her ears and her eyes drifted to the ground where the script had fallen. The binding, already worn from use, snapped and pages scattered with the nighttime breeze. She felt her chest twinge at the sight but her mind was too slow to decipher the reason for it. She reached to pick up the pages that remained on the ground only for those to blow away too.

_**Life is short but this time it was bigger  
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees**_

Something about watching the script blow away was too much. She felt sick and dizzy and weak and, for all the world, she just wanted to sleep and wake up from this nightmare. She made her way into her room and her eyes found the painting that hung beside her bed- her children sans Kiyi. Zuko had found it at the Ember Island house and replaced the commissioned wedding painting that had hung beside her desk. Once she had looked up into the cold yellow eyes of her royal husband and felt sadness and hurt, now she found the same in the golden eyes of her daughter. All she wanted was to sleep and to have the world stop, for just a moment, so she could breathe properly and not feel the pain and sadness. Her vision began to haze, though she was almost sure she'd run out of tears sometime during her rereading of the play. She could hardly account for what she was doing, only that she needed to lay down and sleep and wake tomorrow to drown herself from this pain again. The bed was warm and comforting when she did eventually find it, as was the darkness that soon replaced her clouded vision. As sleep took her she swore she heard a young Azula calling out to her.

_**We found her with her face down in the pillow**_

"_Mama, get up, it's time for breakfast." Tiny hands tugged at her comforter._

_Ursa buried her face in the pillows, "five more minutes, dear."_

_The weight of her daughter climbing on top of her made her smile exasperatedly into her pillow. The young bender pushed at her mother's shoulders, "Come on, mom."_

"_Alright, alright." She sighed and rolled over, looking up at the five year old sitting on top of her. Despite her own desire to sleep she couldn't suppress the smile that crossed her face seeing her daughter still in her pajamas, black hair sleep mussed, gold eyes cloudy with fading dreams. She reached up and stroked her child's cheek while the darkness of her dreams faded away. _

"Mom?" It was well past noon and his mother was still in bed. Fearing she was sick the fire lord went to her rooms to check on her.

_The young fire bender leaned into her mother's hand. "Mom?"_

Zuko's hand settled on his mother's shoulder as he tried to rouse her. He was met with a cold that crawled up his finger tips to settle in his gut.

"Mom?"

_**Clinging to his picture for dear life**_

"_Mom, can we go to that play you like today?" Azula asked, holding her hand and walking beside her down the empty palace halls._

Refusing to believe what his gut told him the fire lord pushed his mother to her back, hoping it would rouse her.

"_Of course we can, dear." She replied smiling down at the young bender._

Her hands held tight to the Dragon Emperor's mask that typically hung behind the painting beside her bed, but beneath the painted wood Ursa's chest was still. The only breaths that stirred the ostrich-horse hair on the mask were his own.

_**We laid her next to him beneath the willow**_

_The gardens were just warm with the evening sun, kept at a comfortable temperature with a mild spring breeze. No servants bustled through the halls; the only noises were those of their voices, and the small splash as bread hit the pond water. Azula curled into her side, cuddling into her sleepily; the day had already been a long one for the young girl. She pulled her drowsy daughter into her lap and held her there, the girl adjusting against her until she was comfortable and they both sat in the quiet watching the turtle-ducks swim lazy circles. _

Zuko stood with his youngest sister and her father as they watched a simple powder blue urn laid to rest beside newly grown grass beneath the garden tree. He swallowed back the lump in his throat. At least she wasn't alone, though whether he was thinking of his mother or sister he didn't know.

_**While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby**_

_Her daughter's eyes were drifting shut as she rested her head against her chest, fighting off the sleep that would inevitably claim her. Ursa ran her hand over the girl's back soothingly and felt her daughter's weight relax into her little by little as the young fire bender lost her battle with sleep. The older woman felt her own eyelids begin to droop as they sat in the warmth of the quiet gardens. She began to hum an old lullaby to the girl in her lap and soon they both drifted to sleep together. _


End file.
